The signatures of the same names on more than 4,500 documents handled by Lender Processing Services Inc. (LPS) for real estate valued at $624.8 million varied enough to raise doubts about their validity, Jeff Thigpen, register of deeds in Guilford County, North Carolina, told reporters today in Greensboro.

The Bristol County Board of Commisioners voted unanimously Tuesday to send a letter to Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley expressing interest in pursuing litigation against Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc, commonly known as MERS, for skirting public recording laws.

MERS is a private network that is partly owned by Bank of America. The commissioners did not specify how much they are looking to recover. “It’d be really rough numbers,” said Commissioner John Mitchell. “We’d have to find out.”

The 1960’s television show “To Tell the Truth”, where imposters pretend to be the central character, is playing out today at the Essex Southern District Registry of Deeds and Register John O’Brien is not happy about it. After the 60 Minutes’ expose on Mortgage Fraud was aired and showed that leading mortgage services have been using forged documents to foreclose on homeowners, Register John O’Brien reviewed mortgage discharges recorded in his Registry. To view the 60 Minutes Article and a link to the video, go to http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/04/01/60minutes/main20049646.shtml

What he found astonished him. In 2010 alone, 286 Bank of America’s mortgage discharges were recorded with what he calls “questionable and possibly fraudulent signatures of the notorious Linda Green.” O’Brien said that he has found at least four variations of Green’s signature recorded in his Registry.

Green, who was spotlighted in the 60 Minutes Episode, had her name signed by various individuals on thousands of documents recorded at Registries of Deeds throughout the state of Massachusetts and across the nation. In Register O’Brien’s opinion, these documents have corrupted Essex County homeowner’s chains of title. “I have a responsibility to ensure that the documents recorded in my Registry meet the statutory requirements of recording. If, however, I am presented with evidence that clearly shows that fraud may have been committed then it is my responsibility as the keeper of records to turn these documents over to the appropriate authorities for their review and action.”

O’Brien has today forwarded certified copies of these discharges to United States Attorney, Carmen Ortez, Attorney General, Martha Coakley, and Essex County District Attorney, Jonathan Blodgett. “If what I suspect has happened, then the people who have committed this fraud should be held accountable for their actions” commented O’Brien. O’Brien fears that this fraudulent behavior is only the tip of the iceberg and feels strongly that lenders and mortgage servicers should be held accountable for their actions. Actions which he originally only thought involved a scheme to circumvent the land recordation system by creating a private, for profit cyber-registry to benefit the big bank’s pocketbooks. Now it seems that MERS, and its member banks may have added fraud to their repertoire of services that they offer.

Register O’Brien questions if a good portion of this foreclosure mess could have been avoided in the first place, if the big banks did what they were supposed to do and recorded assignments like other lenders do. Register O’Brien believes: 1) Homeowners deserve to know who owns their mortgages; 2) Assignments should be recorded in the appropriate registry of deeds, each and every time a mortgage is sold, to provided transparency and public disclosure of ownership; and 3) Any and all documents should be signed by an authorized authority at the entity that actually owns and holds the note secured by the mortgage.

PRESS RELEASE

Guilford County Register of Deeds Jeff Thigpen will hold a press conference in the Blue Room in the Old Guilford County Courthouse on Wednesday, May 6th at 10 am to reveal the findings of an internal investigation initiated after a 60 Minutes segment called “The Mortgage Paperwork Mess” that followed alleged fraud committed the company Doc X, owned by Lender Proccessing Services (LPS) and contracted with major mortgage and banking institutions including Wells Fargo, Bank of America and the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) Inc.

Register of Deeds Thigpen will be joined by Lynn Szymoniak, an attorney interviewed during the segment by 60 Minutes Scott Pelley. The findings of this internal investigation will be revealed and forwarded to the appropriate federal and state agencies including the Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS), and Office of Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).

The findings will be submitted to Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, heading the 50 State Attorney General Investigations into Foreclosure Fraud, and North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, current President of the National Association of Attorneys General for their consideration and the financial services institutions.

Register of Deeds Thigpen will also announce actions taken involving Lenders and Mortgage companies to address the findings of this investigation.

Curtis Hertel Jr., Register of Deeds for Ingham County, says that a discovery he made involving alleged fraudulent mortgage documents is now being investigated by both the Ingham County Sheriff’s Department and the FBI.

“Yes, this is, in my opinion, fraud,” Hertel said. “This is a situation where people were forging someone else’s name to a legal document to take another person’s property. That is fraud.”

When the Suffolk County Legislature meets again next week, the county’s share of an estimated $2 billion in fees big banks saved with their electronic record-keeping system — bypassing paper mortgage records in county clerks’ offices — will top the agenda for legislator Ed Romaine.

In his previous job as county clerk, Romaine fought in court against the Mortgage Electronic Registration System, or MERS, for several years in the early 2000s and lost. But he’s taking another run at it now as the firm’s shaky legal foundation is cracking and so many ordinary homeowners are suffering from questionable foreclosure actions involving MERS.

The registry of deeds is supposed to be a sleepy place where you go to record your mortgage or look up how much your neighbors paid for their homes.

But at the Southern Essex District Registry of Deeds in Salem, haymakers are being thrown in a bare knuckles brawl featuring Register John O’Brien in one corner and Bank of America Corp. and other large banks in the other.

In O’Brien’s mind, big U.S. banks created a bogeyman called the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems to dodge paying recording fees when a mortgage is assigned. Early estimates indicate Massachusetts taxpayers have been deprived of anywhere from $200 million to $400 million-plus in lost revenue. O’Brien says his office alone has lost more than $22 million, but he calls that a conservative estimate.

COURTHOUSE — Montgomery County Recorder of Deeds Nancy Becker is urging registers of deeds across state and the country to withdraw public money from any banks affiliated with the Mortgage Electronic Registry System (MERS), which she claims is undermining the practice of accurate land recording.

[…]

Since discovering the descrepancies, Becker has pulled the county funds out of Wells Fargo and transferred the money into Univest National Bank and Trust Company, a smaller local bank based in Souderton. The bank had been approached by MERS but decided not to partner with the cyber registry.

In light of the action taken by the Department of Treasury, The Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Office of the Thrift Supervision and the Federal Housing Finance Agency, whereby they issued a Cease and Desist Consent Order against the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. “MERS”; Essex County Register of Deeds, John O’Brien , who has been leading a national effort to ensure that MERS and its member banks including Bank of America, J P Morgan Chase and others, be held accountable for the damage that they have inflicted on the land recordation system and their failure to pay recording fees, said that he is very encouraged that this action has been taken. O’Brien, however, cautioned that this is just the beginning of a very long process to ensure that these banks are held accountable both monetarily and legally for the damage that they have done.

O’Brien, along with Register of Deeds, Jeff Thigpen, of Guilford County, North Carolina, have asked that representatives of the Registers of Deeds across the nation be given a seat at the table during any discussions with MERS, its member banks and any and all government agencies. “It is imperative that we make sure that our voices are heard. As Registers, we have the responsibility to ensure that our records are accurate. We must never lose sight of the fact that millions of homeowners across this country have had their chain of title compromised. This is a very serious issue which needs to be addressed. In addition, MERS must be held accountable for their failure to pay billons of dollars in recording fees. Fees, I might add, that everyone else is required to pay. We will continue to lead this fight to make sure that these issues are not swept under the rug and settled for pennies on the dollar. The taxpayers must be made whole, and the homeowners must be guaranteed that their chain of title is accurate.” said O’Brien.

Norfolk County Register of Deeds William P. O’Donnell Requests Support on Behalf of Massachusetts Citizens

Norfolk County Register of Deeds William P. O’Donnell announced today that he has requested Attorney General Martha Coakley to examine the issue of whether the large lending conglomerates have failed to pay the recording fees associated with the sale and assignment of mortgages as mandated by Massachusetts Law.

Register O’Donnell’s request comes on the heels of the recent Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s ruling U.S. Bank v. Ibanez, in which the Commonwealth’s highest court stated that when a holder of a mortgage seeks to exercise its right to foreclose upon a home that mortgage holder must prove that it is the valid owner of the mortgage at the time of foreclosure. The Ibanez case raises multiple issues concerning the practices of huge lending conglomerates utilizing the Mortgage Electronic Recording System, Inc. or “MERS” to keep track of the numerous and multiple sales and assignments of average homeowners’ mortgages.

Register O’Donnell states that, “Prior to 1995 the sale or assignment of a mortgage was traditionally confirmed by a recording at the Registry of Deeds. The transparency of this practice not only afforded safeguards and protections for homeowners but resulted in revenue to the Commonwealth, the counties, and our local communities.” O’Donnell adds that especially in these tough economic times when, “Local aid is being cut, public safety shortchanged, and drastic adjustments made the revenue loss implication cannot be overstated and warrants inquiry.” Register O’Donnell notes that while local community banks and lenders appeared to have followed long held recording practices the failure of the huge lending conglomerates to follow suit in Norfolk County may have resulted in anywhere from $1.5 to $3.1 million in lost revenue in 2010 alone. “It is a question of fundamental fairness and one to which I will personally support the Attorney General’s efforts at examining,” states O’Donnell..

Kevin Harvey, the county’s First Assistant Register, said that it’s not just a matter of unpaid fees at stake.

There are 148,000 mortgages on record at the Southern Essex County Registry of Deeds with cloudy ownwership, Harvey said — in large prt because of the way MERS documented, or failed to document, the transfers.

“We have a forensic mortgage auditor looking at their records,” Harvey said. “Once we have that, we may find that their records aren’t accurate.

“There may be fraudulent assignments, and a significant amount of assignments that are not filed,” Harvey added. “They’d file the original transfer, but after that, they never recorded the assignments because they didn’t want anybody to know what they were doing behind the scenes.”

We appreciate your leadership in the mortgage foreclosure working group, as part of a coordinated national effort by states, to review the practice of “robo-signing” within the mortgage servicing industry. We understand this investigation is nearing conclusion, but we want to implore you to act on a very important issue to homeowners across the country.

As County Land Record Recorders in Massachusetts and North Carolina, we have been gravely concerned about the role of the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) in not only foreclosure proceedings, but as it undermines the legislative intent of our offices as stewards of land records. MERS tracks more than 60 million mortgages across the United States and we believe it has assumed a role that has put constructive notice and the property rights system at risk. We believe MERS undermines the historic purpose of land record recording offices and the “chain of title” that assures ownership rights in land records.

As a result, we are asking as part of your probe, that this task force and the National Association of Attorney Generals require that all past and present MERS assignments of deeds of trust/mortgages be filed in local recording offices throughout the United States immediately. Assignments are required by statute to be filed in Massachusetts, however they are not currently required to be recorded in North Carolina. We feel, that it is important that the Registers of Deeds should have representatives at the table before any settlement is discussed or agreed to as it relates to MERS failure to record assignments and pay the proper fees.

This action would serve three specific purposes. First, the filing of all assignments would help recover the chain of title that determines property ownership rights that has been lost and clouded over during the past 13 years because of the scheme that MERS has set in place. Second, transparency and confidence in ownership rights would be restored and this would prevent the infringement upon those rights by others. Third, this action would support a return to sound fundamentals in our economy between the financial services industry and public recording offices.

MERS has defended their practices by saying that they were helping the registries of deeds by reducing the amount of paperwork that needed to be recorded. This claim is outrageous. This is help we did not ask for, nor was it help that we needed. It is very clear that the only ones that they were helping were themselves. Over the past 10-12 years, recording offices across the United States have upgraded their internal and external technology to meet the demands of lenders, title underwriters, title searchers and citizens. In fact, in 1998 the Southern Essex District Registry of Deeds in Massachusetts became the first registry of deeds to provide both document images and indices available to the public, 24 hours a day, free of charge on the world-wide-web. In doing so, the Registry received a Computerworld Smithsonian Award which recognized the innovative use of technology to benefit society. In 2009, the Guilford County Register of Deeds was given a Local Government Federal Credit Union Productivity Award by the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners for their technological innovations. Nationally, over 93% of the public land records are up to date and current, according to Ernest Publishing.

As of today, there are over 600 recording jurisdictions, covering 43% of the US population that have incorporated an eRecording model into their document recording operations. We believe these jurisdictions cover nearly 80% of the volume of assignments that should be recorded. The remaining areas could be covered quickly, with legislation requiring such action by state legislatures.

Quite frankly, we believe this can and should be done. It’s the right thing to do.

In the coming weeks, we will be working with our national organizations, the National Association of County Recorders, Election Officials and Clerks (NACRC) and the International Association of Clerks, Recorders, Election Officials, and Treasurers (IACREOT) to take the same position. We are also sending a copy of this letter to the National Conference on State Legislatures (NCSL) and the National Association of Counties (NACO).

An Essex County official is boycotting Bank of America and calling on government agencies across the nation to follow suit to protest the firm’s ties to a controversial mortgage-recording network.

“We want to hit Bank of America in the pocketbook to send a message that’s loud and clear,” said Southern Essex County Register of Deeds John O’Brien, who’s taking his office’s business from Bank of America to locally owned Century Bank.

“Chase has been identified as one of the banks that have a high rate of predatory lending and also for not helping to modify loans,” the village’s mayor, Wayne Hall, said Tuesday.

The city’s treasurer, Ray Calame, said the village would soon begin to slowly withdraw the $12.5 million in operating funds and investments it had in Chase, ultimately ending Hempstead’s more than 20-year relationship with the bank.

Following last nights 60 Minutes expose on the Mortgage Paperwork Mess (view at www.salemdeeds.com ) Southern Essex District Register of Deeds, John O’Brien announced that he has written to Massachusetts State Treasurer, Steven Grossman. He has asked that the Treasurer change depository banks. Register O’Brien has specifically asked the Treasurer to place all deposits from his Registry into a local, non-MERS bank that follows the Massachusetts Land recordation rules. On an annual basis the Southern Essex District Registry of Deeds deposits approximately $25 million dollars into Bank of America.

O’Brien, who is leading a nationwide effort against the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (“MERS”), of which Bank of America is a major shareholder asserts that Bank of America, along with the other MERS member banks have failed to record assignments and pay the associated fees and in doing so has deprived the taxpayers of millions of dollars in lost revenue. O’Brien estimates that in his county alone the amount is over $22 million dollars and that, he adds, is a very conservative estimate. According to O’Brien, the loss of revenue to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts could be as high as $200 million dollars and to the nation, possibly in the billions.

O’Brien, who has asked MERS and their lender banks to come clean, open their books, and provide a full public accounting as to how many times and to whom they have sold consumers’ mortgages said, “Perhaps when these lenders lose millions of dollars in deposits, they may begin to understand the seriousness of their actions. It seems to me that their business model which has been referred to as “fees for thee, not for me” needs to be abolished.”

O’Brien further stated, “I find it extremely ironic, that the chief executive of Bank of America, who just last week received a $10 million dollar bonus continues to allow his bank to participate in this scheme. A scheme which has compromised the integrity of the land recordation system in Massachusetts. MERS has defended their practices by saying that they were helping the registries of deeds by reducing the amount of paperwork that needed to be recorded. This claim is outrageous. This is help that I did not need, nor did I ask for. It is very clear to me, that the only ones that they were helping were themselves, which I find shameful. For us to continue to reward these banks by depositing taxpayers’ money into them, is clearly not the responsible thing to do.”

O’Brien said he is reaching out to Registers’ of Deeds in Massachusetts and across the nation to ask them to join with him and encourage their state and county governments to follow his initiative and withdraw public funds from MERS’ member banks. O’Brien said, “By doing this we will send a resounding message that government officials are no longer going to stand by and continue to allow MERS and their joint venture banking partners to profit at the expense of the very same people that they are abusing.